Matt Albert

Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Presentation: In a rare U.S. appearance, two surviving victims of Japanese military sexual slavery will be at SMU on Friday, April 22, for the Embrey Human Rights Program’s “Evening With Kang Il-Chul and Lee Ok-Seon,” held in partnership with Seoul, South Korea’s House of Sharing, an assisted living home where Il-Chul and Ok-Seon and five others find support. The free public event will begin with a 6:30 p.m. reception featuring Korean food and dance tributes, followed by a 7:15 p.m. discussion in McCord Auditorium, Room 306 of Dallas Hall, 3225 University Blvd.

Cézanne Quartet: Join the Cézanne Quartet, Meadows’ Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence, on Saturday, April 23 as they perform the two quartets by Janacek and Beethoven’s “Rasumovsky” Quartet, op. 59, no. 2. Since winning Second Place Ensemble in the Senior Division of the Coltman Chamber Music Competition, the musicians have collaborated with cellist Andrés Díaz and violist Matt Albert of SMU, performed with the Bridge the Gap Chamber Players and Open Classical Artist Series and participated in the McGill International String Quartet Academy. The free public event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium.

Heavenly Images: “When I consider your heavens….” The words of Psalm 8 serve as the basis for the final choral concert of the season on Thursday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. From Tarik O’Regan’s TheEcstasies Above, a setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s Israfel, to Franz Joseph Haydn’s celebratory chorus The Heavens Are Telling, you will spend the evening gazing at a myriad of heavenly images. The Meadows choirs are honored to be joined in this performance by the young artists of Flower Mound High School. The concert is free and open to the public and will be held in Caruth Auditorium.

Friends of the Library: The Friends of the SMU Libraries will host the 16th annual Tables of Content fundraiser at 6 p.m., Saturday, April 30, in the newly renovated Fondren Foundation Centennial Reading Room in Fondren Library, 6414 Robert S. Hyer Lane.

The event will include the presentation of the 7th annual Literati Award to Darwin Payne ’68, SMU centennial historian and professor emeritus of communications. The event also will feature a reception honoring the “Top 10 Haute Young Authors” as well as 19 table hosts who will lead discussions on a variety of topics with guests at the dinner.

Tickets to Tables of Content are $150. Sponsorship packages with special benefits and seating for the event are available from $1,000 to $10,000. For additional information, call (214) 768-3225 or visit smu.edu/friends.

The internationally acclaimed Escher String Quartet is set to perform two free concerts, open to the public, at SMU. This will be the second program of their 2015-2016 Meadows residency. This group has previously performed at New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall and Berlin’s Piano Salon Christophori. Now, they’ll perform at Caruth Auditorium on March 17 and at O’Donnell Hall on March 18, both at 7:30 p.m.

The concert on March 17 will showcase three pieces, most notably the world premiere of Night Music, composed by Meadows Master of Music degree candidate Michael van der Sloot. Van der Sloot, who studies composition and is also a talented cellist, he has written works for the Calgary Youth Orchestra and Grammy-winning violinist and SMU Meadows Artist-in-Residence Matt Albert, among others.

Michael van der Sloot (M.M. Composition ’17)

Van der Sloot describes the piece as “pretty creepy and restless.”

“It’s like when you’re lying completely still in bed, wide awake because you know there is a monster in the closet. There’s a little bit of anxiety and anticipation,” he says.

His piece was chosen among submissions from multiple other music composition students. “The atmosphere and the title of the work were a compelling fit for our program, which deals with death, either through direct personal experience as in Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 3, or indirectly as inFranz Shubert’s Death and the Maiden,” says Aaron Boyd, one of two violinists in the Escher String Quartet. “We were struck by the quality of all of the composers’ submissions, but van der Sloot’s work was an impressive combination of aleatoric freedom with real textural and timbral beauty.”

The quartet will also hold workshops and classes as part of their residency. One workshop will be a particularly immersive experience for the students and will culminate in the formation of the March 18 concert. This side-by-side concert with the quartet and music students of the Meadows school will include works by Brahms, Dvorak, Shostakovich, and Haydn.

The 2016 Meadows Virtuosi Concert will spotlight Professor of Cello Andrés Díaz and Artist-in-Residence and Director of Chamber Music Matt Albert in an annual performance featuring Meadows faculty, students and guests playing side-by-side in an exciting chamber music program.

Also featured will be Dallas Symphony Orchestra violinist Maria Schleuning and the Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence Cézanne Quartet, made possible by a generous campaign donor.

Matt Albert

The program will include works by Caroline Shaw, Andrew Norman, Kevin Puts and Astor Piazzola,as well as the rarely performed septet realization of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen.

The show is free and open to the public and will be held at 4 p.m.Saturday, Jan. 30 in Caruth Auditorium.

To observe the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, SMU is participating in a community collaboration that commemorates the event in music. Wading Home, an opera set against the backdrop of the historic storm, opens for a one-night-only free performance at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015 in Dallas City Performance Hall, 2520 Flora Street. The show was performed in New Orleans on Sept. 12-13 at Loyola University’s Roussel Hall.

The story of a young musician’s struggle to find his missing father in the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane, Wading Home is based on the novel of the same name by Dallas author and violinist Rosalyn Story. The opera, composed by Dallas musician Mary Alice Rich, is produced in collaboration with several Meadows School of the Arts faculty members and students, as well as community members from Dallas and New Orleans.

The opera is a dream project for Meadows Professor of Voice Barbara Hill Moore, who is serving as producer and music director. The stage director is Meadows Director of Opera Hank Hammett, and the conductor is Constantina Tsolainou, former head of choral activities at the Meadows School.

“I am intensely proud of the amazing gifts of time, talent, and love of the human family and spirit, shared without compensation by SMU faculty, staff, students and alumni in this collaborative project with Loyola University and the people of New Orleans,” says Hill Moore. “The three performances of Wading Home are a community collaboration shared by Texans, Louisianans, New Yorkers, South Africans and a host of people from around the globe with the people of New Orleans and of Dallas.”

Baritone and Meadows alumnus Donnie Ray Albert (M.M. ’75) sings the role of the lost father, Simon. Other leading roles in the Dallas performance include established opera singers and Meadows alumni Leon Turner (M.M. ’92) as Julian, Simon’s musician son, and Bronwen Forbay (Artist Diploma ’04) as Velmyra, Julian’s former love who helps him reconnect with his Louisiana roots and his lost father. Also sharing the stage is Quintin Coleman (M.M. ’15, Performer’s Diploma ’17) as Julian’s trumpeter friend Grady, with whom Julian has lost touch during the years he has been performing around the globe as a famous jazz musician. Dance alumnus Jamal Story (B.F.A. Dance Performance and B.A. Corporate Communications ’99) will also perform.

The SMU Meadows new music ensemble SYZYGY, led by Meadows Director of Chamber Music and three-time Grammy winner Matt Albert, will play live. Also onstage for the Dallas performance will be the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas.

Higher Education Colloquium: The Department of Education Policy and Leadership presents a panel on the impact of changes in national and state policy on college student success and financial aid. The panel includes Don Heller, Professor and Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, Michael McLendon, Professor and Associate Dean of the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University, Laura Perna, Professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Thomas, Professor and Dean of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Michael Harris, Associate Professor of the Simmons School of Education at Southern Methodist University, will moderate the panel. The event is on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 5:30 p.m. in McCord Auditorium; registration is required.

Family Weekend 2013: SMU families will arrive at the Hilltop for Family Weekend 2103, Oct. 4-6. The theme is SMU: Where Dreams Come True, and the weekend is full of activities from the Annual Taste of Dallas Dinner on Friday to the football game against Rutgers on Saturday. Read all the details here. Pony up!

MVP: The Meadows Virtuosi Players was formed in 2012 to showcase outstanding meadows students performing side by side with their faculty colleagues. Faculty artists Andrés Díaz and Matt Albert started the program and will perform alongside Ekaterina Gumenyuk and Hando NahkurSaturday, Oct. 5. Gumenyuk and Nahkur were the first two pianists accepted into the Meadows Artist Diploma Program. The concert is at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium and is free and open to the public.

Faculty and Alumni Artist Series: Meadows faculty artist Matt Albert and noted performer Adam Marks will collaborate for an evening of music Monday, Feb. 11. Albert is the director of chamber music and the SYZYGY ensemble in the Meadows School. He is also is a founding member of Meadows Prize winners eighth blackbird, with whom he won a Grammy Award. Currently on the faculty of Carthage College, Marks has performed with eighth blackbird as part of his collaborative career. Albert will be on the violin and Marks on the piano for a night of “rhythmically driven music with high-octane emotion.” The concert starts at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center. Tickets are $7 for faculty, staff and students. (Images via Meadows and Adam Marks, edited by SMU Public Affairs)

Black History Month: SMU continues its Black History Month celebration with Bernard Franklin on Tuesday, Feb. 12. Dr. Franklin speaks across the country with “a desire to empower people to act, and to change the world…one person at a time!” The entire day is free and open to the public, and the schedule is as follows:

2-3 p.m. America in Denial: Young Men Are Struggling (Hughes-Trigg Forum)

Thursday, Feb. 14: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Solo recital: Award-winning pianist and SMU alumna and faculty member Liudmila Georgievskaya will perform on the Hilltop Saturday, Feb. 16. Originally from Russia, Georgievskaya received her Artist Certificate from Meadows School of the Arts in 2010 and continues to perform internationally as a Meadows faculty member. The concert begins at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium, Owen Arts Center. (Image via Liudmila Georgievskaya)

Piano and percussion: SMU’s Meadows School of Art invites you to the Faculty Artists and Alumni Series for piano performances by Catharine Lysinger and Alex McDonald. Lysinger is director of the Piano Preparatory Department in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts; in 2008 she created the National Piano Institute for Young Artists in collaboration with David Karp. McDonald is a pianist and current doctoral student at the Julliard School. For the second half of the program Lysinger and McDonald will be joined by percussionists Douglas Howard and Brian Jones. Howard is an adjunct associate professor of percussion for Meadows and principal percussionist and has received the Sabian Lifetime Achievement award at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Jones is an adjunct professor of jazz percussion at VCU. The performance takes place at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29 in Caruth Auditorium. Tickets are $7 each for SMU faculty, staff and students.

Athletic Forum: The 2012 PwC SMU Athletic Forum continues with Danica Patrick on Wednesday, Oct. 31. Patrick was the 2005 IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year and the first woman to win an IndyCar race (the 2008 Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Motegi). Patrick is married, lives in Arizona and ranks 10th in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Hear about her extraordinary experiences at noon at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. For more information, contact Jeff Lockhart, 214-768-4314.

500 Days:New York Times best-selling author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald gives SMU’s Fall 2012 William J. O’Neil Lecture in Business Journalism at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1 in 241 Umphrey Lee Center. Eichenwald – a former investigative reporter, columnist and senior writer for The New York Times and a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize – will discuss his latest book, 5oo Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars. This non-fiction work takes an inside look into the decisions and dialogue of the 18 months (500 days) following the 9/11 terror attacks. The William J. O’ Neil Lecture series brings a business journalism professional to speak on campus each semester. The event is free and open to the public.

The Twelve: Author Justin Cronin visits SMU to give a lecture and book signing for his latest novel, The Twelve, at noon Friday, Nov. 2 in the Mary Proctor Mack Grand Ballroom, Umphrey Lee Center. The event starts with a light buffet at 11:30 a.m. Cronin, a New York Times best-selling author, has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Whiting Writer’s Award. The Twelve is book 2 in his trilogy about a government experiment gone wrong that unfolds into a man-made apocalypse. This event is presented by Friends of the SMU Libraries; contact Cindy Ruppi, 214-768-3225, for more information.

Community Service Day: On Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012 the SMU campus community and local alumni are encouraged to participate in the 44th annual Community Service Day. Presented by the SMU LEAD and the Community Engagement and Leadership Center, community service day is one of the longest standing traditions. Service projects for this year include: redoing a rooftop garden, organizing a library, working in the thrift store and service at the Dallas Arboretum. Service will be from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and you can sign up through Mustang Trak. Contact the Community Engagement and Leadership Center at 214.768.4403 for more information.

Making music: The launch of the 2012 Faculty and Student Artist Recital Series is Saturday, Nov. 3, with Andrés Díaz and Matt Albert as the featured faculty artists of the night. Díaz, a professor of cello in SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, is an internationally renowned concert artist who has been awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Albert is a violinist, visiting artist-in-residence and director of chamber music in Meadows. Díaz and Albert will showcase their works alongside advanced students at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the public.

Art smart: Ceramicist Ilona Romule will be at SMU Monday, Sept. 24, to give the MeadowsVisiting Artist Lecture. Romule’s unique work is simultaneously two-and three-dimensional: She draws figures on the sides of her pots and sculpts them partially emerging from the pots as three-dimensional forms. She is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and has participated in international competitions and exhibitions. The lecture will be held at 7 p.m. in the Greer Garson Screening Room of the Owen Arts Center and is free to the public.

SYZGY: The Meadows new music ensemble SYZGY will open its 2012-13 season Friday, Sept. 28 with a program featuring work by composer John Adams and led by ensemble director Matt Albert. The strings, winds and percussions can be heard at 8 p.m. in Caruth Auditorium. Tickets are $7 for students, faculty and staff. For more information, contact the Meadows Ticket Office, 214-768-2787 (214-SMU-ARTS).

Raúl Coronado

“We the Pueblo of Texas”: The Gilbert Lecture Series kicks off at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, with an event focused on Latino studies and hosted by Raúl Coronado. Coronado is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, a past resident of SMU as a Bill and Rita Clements Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America, and the author of A World Not to Come: A History of 19th-Century Latino Writing, Print Culture, and the Disenchantment of the World. Coronado is currently working on a study of the historical emergence of queer Latino/a subjectivities; hear all of his insights in DeGolyer Library.

True to Texas: Y’all are in for a treat, because the 2012 State Fair of Texas begins Friday, Sept. 28 and runs daily through Saturday, Oct. 21. The fair kicks off with a ceremony at 7 a.m. and a parade through downtown Dallas at noon. Highlights include the Reliant Starlight Parade, the State Fair Auto Show, livestock shows, the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, the Chevrolet Main Stage featuring artists like Kellie Pickler and Kevin Fowler, and all the fried food your heart desires. General admission is $16; call 214-565-9931 for more information.

Faculty artistry: Chee-Yun Kim and Alessio Bax are more than SMU faculty members: They are also internationally renowned musicians who have won the Avery Fisher Career Grant. At 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, Chee-Yun will play the violin and Bax the piano as they perform pieces from composers Ferruccio Busoni and Beethoven as part of the Faculty Artist and Distinguished Alumni Recital Series. The performance is in Caruth Auditorium and costs $7 for students, faculty and staff. For more information, contact the Meadows Ticket Office, 214-768-2787 (214-SMU-ARTS).